Sunday, September 16, 2007

The SACO just ended this afternoon and while the results are still secret I can tell you this year's bunch is looking good! We had 22 participate in the open round and three in the future stars. It was also our first attempt at an online contest with the same problems which drew in over 100 registrations.

The questions (available here) were really nasty this year. As if we didn't clobber them enough last year, a fair number of the contestants were returnees from last year. Gwylim Ashley did so well in the first day of competition in the future stars (beating several seniors even when only considering his mark for the single problem overlap between the two categories) that we did a first by offering him the possibility to move to the open category for the second day.

My old school, Rondebosch Boys' High School, had four contestants in the open round and one in the future stars. While I can't tell the results they did astoundingly well. Go BOSCH!! It does help when you have three Moollas to encourage the guys. :D

The awards ceremony is tomorrow evening, after which I'll be posting results. The top six get medals (one gold, two silver, three bronze) and some prize money for themselves and their schools. The top six Python contestants get a super wad of money ranging from R30,000 for 1st place to R10,000 for 6th place, all thanks to Mark Shuttleworth.

A couple shots from the first round of competition:

And the obligatory pizza stack:

The interest in Open Arena is growing exponentially year-on-year, with more than half of the contestants and coaches playing in a single flag capture:

And finally, the frantic discussions to find out how the $%#& to solve my problem. :-P